Revealed: police across US spread false rumors about Venezuelan gang threats
Source: The Guardian
Thu 23 Oct 2025 07.00 EDT
Last modified on Thu 23 Oct 2025 11.05 EDT
An unverified rumor that Venezuelan gang members were preparing to kill police officers spread like wildfire through US law enforcement agencies last year, internal records reveal, only for federal officials to later quietly acknowledge the claim was mistaken. The intelligence report, which appears to have first been disseminated by a local New Mexico police department in July 2024, suggested that the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang had directed its members to “fire on or attack” law enforcement.
The vague assertion quickly traveled among law enforcement agencies. It even made its way into a formal proclamation by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and was repeated by Republican Congress members as evidence of the dangers of Venezuelan immigrants and Democrats’ border policies. Months later, however, the Federal Bureau of Investigation wrote in an internal report that claims of a TdA “directive to actively target US law enforcement” were inaccurate.
There has been no public acknowledgment of misstatements. The documents were uncovered by Property of the People, a government transparency non-profit, which has made records requests related to US authorities’ discussions of TdA and shared files with the Guardian. The records, TdA experts said, suggested that a wide range of powerful law enforcement agencies lacked a basic understanding about the gang and its operations.
In recent months, the stakes of dubious and alarmist claims about TdA have become increasingly high. Trump’s administration has carried out seven lethal strikes on vessels near Venezuela, in some cases claiming the military was targeting TdA members, without providing concrete evidence, and United Nations experts have said the attacks violated international law. The Department of Homeland Security has also used unsubstantiated claims of TdA affiliation to deport Venezuelans, without due process, to a notorious El Salvador prison – and has moved to revoke the legal status of roughly 600,000 Venezuelan immigrants.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/23/venezuela-tren-de-aragua-gang-police
It's like the MS-13 obsession and before that, the "Bloods" and the "Crips" stuff.
The biggest criminal gang in the world is operating out of what is left of the White House.
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